The changes which occur in a man's lifespan are indeed strange. From gunfighter to newspaper writer in a big city paper is what I refer to. And yet this is precisely what happened to gunfighter Bat Masterson, born in an age when culture was upon the eastern seaboard and savagery along the frontiers of an expanding country.

He derived his name "Bat" partially because of an incident which happened here in Texas. An army sargeant by name of Kiing had a girl friend whom Bat asked for a dance and a fight ensuede in which Bat was shot in the leg, fracturing the bone. King was killed in the fight with a bullet in the heart. This leg wound made Bat limp, and because he later came to use the cane as a club on recalcitrant cowboy heads when he became a peace officer, he earned the sobriquet, "Bat".